1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an inkjet printer for performing printing by discharging a liquid such as printing ink, or a liquid or paste-like resist material used in manufacturing printed wiring boards.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, as shown in FIG. 8, a known discharge head 100 used in an inkjet printer comprises: an ink chamber 104 that communicates with an ink tank 102 and that is filled with ink 101; and a piezoelectric element 110 that is deformed by energization to pressurize the ink 101 contained in the ink chamber 104 so that the ink 101 is discharged through a discharge port 108 of a capillary nozzle 106.
On the other hand, it has been proposed to form wiring patterns of printed wiring boards by inkjet printing.
More specifically, when a wiring pattern is formed on a board by etching a copper foil adhered to the board, a resist pattern is formed on the copper foil to cover an area corresponding to the wiring pattern. Conventionally, a photosensitive resist has been applied to a surface of the copper foil and, then, it is optically exposed and developed to form a resist pattern. However, it is cumbersome to form the resist pattern in this manner. Therefore, it is contemplated to form a wiring pattern by printing a resist material on the copper foil in a predetermined resist pattern using an inkjet printer.
However, when the printing is performed by discharging a paste-like resist material through the conventional discharge head 100 shown in FIG. 8, the resist material has a higher viscosity than the printing ink and is hard to discharge from the discharge port 108 and, therefore, it is difficult to eject the resist material efficiently and the resist material cannot be accurately printed on the copper foil in a predetermined pattern.